


Too Small

by dustbear



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Clothing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustbear/pseuds/dustbear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako Mori has spent most of her life in Pan Pacific Defense Corps regulation uniforms, which have never fit her quite right. The sleeves are always too long, her strong shoulders are yet too narrow, her waist still too small. She has learned how to alter the clothes slightly - how to hem up her pants, how to add holes to belts, but more complicated things like taking in the width of her pants or the waist of her coveralls, are past the scope of her amateur tailoring.  </p>
<p>But still, Mako has always been little too small to fit in the smallest regulation uniform size.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Small

Mako Mori has spent most of her life in Pan Pacific Defense Corps regulation uniforms, which have never fit her quite right. The sleeves are always too long, her strong shoulders are yet too narrow, her waist still too small. She has learned how to alter the clothes slightly - how to hem up her pants, how to add holes to belts, but more complicated things like taking in the width of her pants or the waist of her coveralls, are past the scope of her amateur tailoring.  

But still, Mako has always been little too small to fit in the smallest regulation uniform size.

When she assembles the list of top candidates to be Raleigh Becket’s co-pilot, she is asked to prioritize the ones that are similar to Yancy Becket in size and build.

When Raleigh Becket arrives at the Shatterdome, she is wearing her favourite coat, the one that actually isn’t too big. She’d bartered with a girl who worked in the maintenance division. Tailoring for staff fighting lessons - the girl had learned how to sew from her aunt, now an aunt long dead and gone, like so many other families. But she shrugs off the coat next time she sees him, no longer particularly concerned with impressing him.

He challenges her, and she shrugs off her shoes and steps forward in her slightly-too-large cargo pants. She can fight in anything, it doesn’t matter.

He says they are drift compatible, says that she’s his new co-pilot, and Mako dares to believe for a moment that she might actually be - that she might get to pilot that beautiful Jaeger that she has already given so much of her life to. She knows her, that Jaeger, knows the small modifications that make her even more perfect than she ever was, feels possessive about it almost. It might have been Raleigh Becket’s Jaeger, but he abandoned that beautiful pile of metal and glory and revenge, and now it’s her Jaeger, and she’s made it glorious again. She will share it with him.

Sometimes, on her walk down from her quarters, she stops by the room where they keep the  pilot suits. They are beautiful, precise, perfect machines, like the machines they are built to fit into. Glossy black, and smooth and so, so, so large. The suits used to be custom made for each cadet, but with the downsizing of the Jaeger program, funds have been allocated elsewhere. It hasn’t been a problem for the others in her program; they’ve all been assigned a suit that’s close enough to their body type to be comfortable. Mako’s skin chafed against her borrowed suit the first time she put it on, and the second time, she learned to wear several layers of clothing inside it. Her high kill score in simulations should be even more impressive considering that she’d done it with heavily blistered feet. The pain drives her - forces the memory of Tokyo to the forefront, propels her forward. She’s lost a shoe, she’s lost a shoe, she’s lost a shoe, she’s lost her family, she’s lost everything.

But there is Marshall Stacker Pentecost, and he says “no,” which he has said many times before, but this “no” hurts the most in the face of Raleigh’s confidence.

Mako has rebelled many, many times before, but this time, she stands down. She wants revenge against for her long-dead family, wants it like she’s never wanted anything before, but she cannot forget that Stacker Pentecost has been her father for longer than her father ever was. He has worked hard for her respect, and she will give him that much, because she is a honorable person.

And then Stacker, well - he says “yes.”

Mako walks down to the room where the pilot suits are and her hands shake, not because she’s not confident, because she is - but because it is actually pretty terrifying to see your dreams come true. But the training suit, it’s not there. She’s come to like that suit, she thinks, even if the looseness in the ankles make her blister, and the padding she has to wear makes her hot and sweaty. She’s worked hard in that pilot’s suit, not thinking of where the last pilot to inhabit it has gone, just completely and entirely focused on what she will do in it - avenge her family, kill the kaiju, make Stacker Pentecost proud of her.

But, it isn’t there, and she panics. All the other pilot suits are there. Some are scuffed and more worn and battered than others, but they’re all there, lined up neatly, except for hers, the one that is smallest, but still not small enough.

Stacker Pentecost clears his throat behind her. And when she turns around, he is holding her suit - no, not her training suit, but _her_ suit - new, and glossy black, and tailored just for her. She's never seen it before, but it is hers, and she knows it.

“It was a precaution.” Pentecost says, sternly.

“A precaution.” Mako repeats, reaching out for the armor. He’d ordered it made, she assumes, knows the cost of manufacturing one of them, knows that the suit wasn’t even supposed to be ordered until Raleigh Becket’s new co-pilot was determined, knows that it takes at least a month to produce a custom fitted suit.

“In case you had to pilot a Jaeger.” he says, leaving the room with a sharp nod.

Pentecost is not a man of many words, but when Mako slips into the suit, marvelling at how it wraps around her like a second skin, noticing that it fits her better than anything she’s very worn in the last decade, she knows that Stacker Pentecost has always believed in her.

Mako Mori steps into the Jaeger, the one that she’s led the restoration effort for, the one whose every bruise she’s memorised, knows like the back of her hand, because it will be her hands. Raleigh Becket smiles at her, amazed but confident, and Mako knows that she has spent most of her life in Pan Pacific Defense Corps regulation uniforms, and this one - finally, this one fits right.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the fact that Mako always looked like she was wearing clothing that didn't fit quite right in the movie. It gave me lots of feelings.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Too Small](https://archiveofourown.org/works/899194) by [argentumlupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumlupine/pseuds/argentumlupine)




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